Okay, so I finally got started on scrapbooking my Christmas 2013 photos. I don't know about you but I seem to need a little breathing time between returning from Christmas and scrapping Christmas photos and memories. And if I'm being entirely honest with you, I've also felt a bit intimidated about starting on my Christmas LOs because last year's turned out such a wild success, I think there's been a part of me that wonders how I'll ever recreate just how pleased I was with their results. Does that sound completely ridiculous? Well, either way, I finally broke the ice.
There were a number of elements about last year's Christmas LOs that I felt really worked well. The black and white photos really added a nice elegance and removed the issue of colour clashing between my mother's dark rose and mauve interior design and the typical Christmas red of paper and embellishments. I also really like using 20x30cm photo enlargements for chapter LOs in my albums so I thought I would repeat that again this year. In fact, I used the exact same sketch, as it worked so well with this gorgeous framed ledger paper with the pretty Merry Christmas corner design.
This year's supplies will include red/white twine, gold accents (gold lame mist, resin flowers, Thickers, etc.), doilies, enamel dots, probably sequins again and I've also pulled out my wax seals, which I had planned to work into this cluster but the spacing and balance just weren't right for it.
Here's a close-up of that pretty pre-printed corner detail. I added in some gold lame mist, a tiny bit of stamping and then the embellishments and date number stickers.
And now I'm stuck. I pulled out the next Christmas photo I wanted to scrap and I just haven't been able to get anything to work with it the way I like. In reflecting on why this is, I've realised the difference between this year's and last year's collections is that nearly all of this year's papers are very busy and often text-based and therefore not good for writing directly onto. I'm going to have to add in some additional papers for journaling on (and I don't feel I have much that co-ordinates well), work in journaling cards & tags or try painting over spots to compensate for this. I'm sure I'll work it out, it's just going to take a bit more playing with than I had expected. Wish me luck!
